Cheapest doesn’t mean easiest

This is a story about our recent trip to Japan from Tanzania.

It was the most challenging journey we ever had but we are so glad we made it.

I was posting on my Instagram story but it was in Japanese so let me share in English here.

April 16th

So it took us 5 days to get to Japan from Maasai village.

It's rainy season now in Tanzania and roads are bumpy we thought it would be dangerous to go with a bike early morning cuz it's dark.

We decided to leave a day earlier in the afternoon. We said bye to our family and James’ mom did praying for us for a safe trip.

We caught a bus at 5pm in Kwediboma (town close to the village) which was the last one and two hours later we arrived in Handeni (another town)

I got to meet my friend from Japan and I was so happy to finally see her in Africa for the first time.

April 17th

Tanga city

The next day we got on a bus after the chai, my friend headed off to Dar Es Salaam and James and I went to Tanga city.

It was around 2-3 hours, felt like an hour though. We got on tuk tuk after that to look for a place to stay.

Later James got sick, his body was burning so we decided not to explore the city but to stay in the hotel.

April 18th

We took a bus from 10:30am to go to Mombasa.

I was nervous cuz this was my first time entering a country by bus.

After 2 hours we arrived at the boarder and showed our covid vaccines and passport.

Then the problem happened.

We were the last ones in the long queue at the immigration counter and officers were obviously not enough to check all passengers.

We already spent so much time and when it was our turn they were suspicious about my past travel records and asked me to come in the office.

Basically he asked me about business visa I had in TZ and why I was in TZ and pretty much everything about my previous stay in TZ.

I told him I was working in TZ and cancelled my visa after I left the job but he still insisted me to show the resignation letter.

Of course I wasn’t expecting that so I was searching my emails and all my papers and when I finally found it from my USB it was just too late.

Our bus dropped our stuff and left without us even though we bought tickets in advance in order to get front seats.

Immigrant officer said to me “it’s ok you can get the next bus”

I was so angry like this is out of my control and there was no way that I could prevent it but still this kind of trouble happens every time when I travel to Africa.

We were stuck at the border for like 2hours but the next bus was full of people and we had no choice but to sit at the very back seats under the  leaking roof with heavy rain.

Less than 2 hours we arrived to Mombasa and again we got another problem.

All of the sudden, a bus driver told us to get off without our bags.

Everyone seemed fine with it and we just followed them without knowing what’s gonna happen.

After walking through a busy local market we saw a ferry in front of us.

We were like

“No… we are not going to get on this ferry”
"Where are we going with this!?"

but there was no other way and other passengers were kept moving towards that ferry so we followed them again.

We were all standing along with cars and tuk tuk then after 10mins we arrived at somewhere.

We were told later that there was no roads so normally people transfer to the ferry to get to the Mombasa city.

The marked place is where we passed with the ferry

The scariest thing I felt that we could've been lost and couldn’t get on the bus after the ferry and lose all our luggage.

There was no information beforehand and even at the time of transferring, I still couldn’t believe we made it to Mombasa.

After that we got tuk tuk to get to the hotel without knowing where we were cuz we didn’t have internet connection and couldn’t use google map.

Anyway we arrived at the hotel which was surprisingly amazing.
(forgot to take pictures)

April 19th

Woke up in the morning ready to take PCR test but it was raining and was so hard to get tuk tuk because of constant blackouts and couldn’t use wifi

but the driver tried different way to get to the hotel even he couldn’t make a call to me.

We made it to hospital in Mombasa and it was pretty smooth and fast service and I was expecting something was going to happen as usual but it didn’t.

In the afternoon we explored the city and the beach and met some Kenyan Maasai.

This was the happiest moments of this trip for sure.

April 20th

The day we are leaving Kenya to Japan.

Also the day I will never forget.

I apologise in advance in case it's hard to understand, so much things happened in this trip.

First of all, we passed the security check.

At the check-in counter a lady told me this PCR certificate is not valid because the type of test written by initials but supposed to be full name.

so she told me to ask the hospital to reissue the certificate properly.

I explained to the hospital and they rejected due to the system or something and it’s not possible to remake the certificate again.

I explained it again to the lady at the counter and she started talking with the manager.

The manager was calling her boss to see if it is ok for us to travel with this certificate.

Meanwhile I was aggressively convincing the hospital side to make it property cuz we paid for this in order to travel.

They sent this

and my family name was even written fully like they wrote half and I felt upset even more.

After waiting 30mins at the counter the manager finally accepted it.
I was almost cry because none of this is my fault why is this happening to me.

I felt like I must have done bad things without knowing to get this punishments or the god is testing to see how I react to those?

Anyway we went upstairs for the immigration counter.

Luckily the officer was Maasai and he and my husband started talking very friendly in their language but later

he told me that normally African when they travel, they must leave from their home country so for example,

James needs to depart from Tanzania when he travels to Japan not from Kenya.

so at the end I paid fine at the counter but I thought like why this kind of important information is not on the internet or their official website?

I mean how could I know about this?

Also there was no receipt of this payment and I am still not sure if the money went to his pocket but at the time I was extremely exhausted and I just wanted us to get out of there so I just paid as I told.

happy but super tired😂

So yeah this was what happened to our trip if you guys were wondering on my Instagram stories.

I think it was miracle that we made it to Japan together and I chose to get a flight from Kenya because it was just cheaper compared to the one from Tanzania but I would never do this again and wouldn't recommend to anyone unless you want to explore other countries.

I’ve learned that the cheapest way doesn’t always mean the easiest way and it was definitely not worth to risk our safety and health.

Thank you again this time for reading my story of our recent trip.
I got sick right after I got home and realised how stressful I was during this trip.

If you enjoyed this blog and want to see more in English please push the like button here or on my Instagram story.

Thank you!!

At Narita airport🇯🇵